by Evan Currie
Woods took a breath.
“Ears!”
The man at the SONAR station looked up, “Sir?”
“Ranging ping to target, full power.”
“Sir?”
Woods smiled thinly, “You heard me, Ears. Make it happen.”
“Uh… Aye Sir. Full power ranging ping… mark.”
The tone rang out, sending a shudder down Woods’s spine as he felt like he’d just committed a cardinal sin.
Nevertheless, he nodded a few seconds later, “Again!”
Woods wasn’t quite able to suppress the urge to grin, more than slightly maniacally as he whispered the words that came to his mind following that.
“Ramming speed.”
*****
At just slightly better than thirty knots, considerably faster than the ‘official’ specs stated the Virginia Class submarine could manage, the Colorado drove straight into the center of the enemy contact’s projected course, blatantly announcing its intent the entire way, much to the consternation of every ship for more than a hundred nautical miles.
The Colorado didn’t hesitate, however much many on board might have flinched at the thought, and as they closed to within a few hundred meters of the contact, the sound of the super cavitation could be heard on board the sub even without the acoustical gear.
The boat didn’t stop its constant pinging of the target, though little return was actually making it back through the super cavitation bubble. It wasn’t needed to locate the target, however, given how noisy the enemy was being.
The pings only served one purpose.
Making sure that the enemy knew without any doubt it was being engaged in possibly the most insane game of chicken ever played.
At fifty meters, without only seconds to contact…
The enemy contact…
Blinked.
*****
Water bulged, for a brief moment, the surface tension seeming to hold as the ship below the surface surged upwards. Then it broke, white cascades washing down in every direction, the angular hull breeching the surface as the ship took briefly to the air.
Below it, the Colorado swept on past, course unchanged as the contact jumped clear over it.
Above, however, the change in stance did not go unnoticed.
*****
Argo Lead
Elise pushed the throttle all the way forward before she consciously knew what she was looking at. The F-35 slammed her back into the seat as she snapped through Mach, leaving a condensation cone in her wake.
“All points, this is Argonauts Lead. I am beginning my attack run,” She said over the allies’ tactical channel. “Say again, I am beginning my attack run. If you’ve got cover, I’d take it now!”
She dipped the nose of the fighter down, picking up more speed as she tracked the target through the Virtual HUD projected on the inside of her helmet, the augmented display letting her looked through the forward armored shell of her cockpit and down to where the target was currently airborne.
A flick of her thumb sent the command that opened up the weapon bays on the fighter as she took her hand off the throttle and punched in the arming code for the first of two B61 thermonuclear gravity bombs currently resting in her racks.
The range closed incredibly fast, seconds passing as she saw the target begin to drop back toward the water.
Oh no, you don’t.
“All points, Argo Lead… Indigo Hammer!”
The fighter jerked upwards slightly, the weight of the B61 dropping away on her command as she pulled the nose up and started climbing for clear sky as fast as the Pratt and Whitney turbofan could drive her.
She didn’t look over her shoulder as the flash managed to light up mostly clear sky ahead of her, despite it being broad daylight.
*****
USS Port Royal
“All hands, Indigo Hammer is confirmed!” Reynaud called over the ship-wide intercom. “Get below and hang on!”
He looked around the bridge of the ship, “What are you all waiting for? Move it!”
He grabbed the closest man to him and shoved him back, almost pushing him down the stairs to the below decks.
“move, move, move!”
Reynaud was the last man on the bridge, holding the course steady right at the target. He was too close now for the ship to run, and he didn’t want to know what would happen if the blast caught the Royal side on. He looked up, eyes following the fighter that was screaming in on its attack run.
The Captain of the Port Royal closed his eyes and dropped to the deck of the bridge as the fighter began to arc upward again.
He saw the flash through closed eyes, even from under the console he was hiding behind.
Seconds passed, nothing changed.
And then, the Port Royal slammed into a wall and Captain Reynaud was hammered forward into the console he was covering behind, glass rained down around him as he felt the air rapidly heat up.
Everything went black a moment later.
*****
CVN 81 Doris Miller
“Holy shit.”
Morrow didn’t bother reprimanding the speaker, in part because he wasn’t completely confident that he wasn’t the speaker.
The B61 was a four hundred kiloton nuclear explosive, and the flash could be seen over the horizon on something that size, let alone the limited range they were from the fighting.
The mushroom cloud was growing in the distance, sending shivers down his back.
Holy shit indeed.
*****
Chapter 23
Everglades
Everything hurt.
Ben was quite certain things hurt that he didn’t even have.
It was, however, a good sign that he was still alive.
He opened his eyes slowly, the shadow of the slowly twisting rotor passing over his face as he looked out at the trees that surrounded them. He heard someone groan, might have been himself but he decided to look around in case it wasn’t.
The others were all in place, the seat restraints having done their jobs apparently.
“Everyone alive?” Major Burke asked painfully.
“If I say no, will you leave me alone?”
“Shut your mouth, Corporal,” Sergeant Kirth growled. “Sound off.”
Everyone slowly chimed in, and it seemed like they’d actually survived the landing… if it could be called that.
Ben looked out over the edge, noting that they weren’t technically on the ground yet.
These are some tough trees, He thought with no small amount of admiration.
They’d managed to stop a crashing helicopter at least a couple dozen feet off the ground. That was pretty damn impressive in his books. Though, frankly, he’d rather not have experienced that impressive feat firsthand… but there were a lot of things in his career with the Realms Marines he’d have preferred not to experience firsthand.
That’s life in the corps, baby.
He was still taking stock when a movement caused his instincts to take over. Ben twisted in his restraints, barely evading the black tendril that stabbed into the interior of the chopper, punching through the seat and into the aluminum and steel behind with ease.
He flinched as a wet splatter struck the side of his face and didn’t have to look to see that at least one of the strikes had found a hit.
While it was withdrawing, Ben hit the release and dropped free of the restraints, his other hand grabbing at the carbine that had clattered around to his feet. His fingers just slipped off the knurled grip as the tendril hooked him on its way out, dragging him out and into the air beyond the chopper.
He heard yelling and shock from above him then but didn’t have any time to worry about it as his hand went automatically to his sidearm, closing around the grips and tugging the weapon free of the holster.
This is not as low class an abomination as we thought!
The infection had remodeled the hosts it had taken, something they’d seen only in limited fashion up
to this point, but it had clearly been holding back.
Ben was swinging around by the leg the thing’s grip unshaking as he extended his weapon and looked for somewhere to shoot. He considered blasting the tentacle itself, but he wasn’t eager to see if he’d survive the thirty-foot drop to the ground, especially not if he were flung by a pissed off and hurt abomination.
He was getting lightheaded with all the swinging, particularly as he was spending far too much time upside down and with the force of the swings driving blood to his brain. Ben fell back on his training to deal with that, clenching his muscles in order to restrict blood flow and drive at least some of it back down his body so he wouldn’t red-out.
His combat fatigues helped with that, being fitted tightly enough to act as crude acceleration flight suits. But Ben knew it was only a matter of delaying the inevitable if he didn’t get himself out of the current situation and do it quickly.
He barely saw the tree coming at him in time to get his arm up to take some of the hit, stars popping in his vision as he felt something crack and hoped it was the tree and not his arm. Then he was whipping back the other way, cursing the whole damn way in a crude gibberish of English, Mandarin, and a lingo that was only remotely understandable to a Marine.
He'd had enough, and was ready to say screw the consequences, aiming his sidearm down around his feet and just lifting the aim point enough to miss his toes as he started firing.
The abomination screamed or roared. Something that sound happy, at least, and for a moment ben was jerked around even more, then suddenly he was free and in freefall.
Ben managed to pack a lot more cursing than he would normally have thought possible in the period of time he spent twisting and falling, snapping through several branches on the way down. He felt a spike of pain run through his chest, and was pretty sure that meant a cracked rib, but the sudden rushing approach of the ground below him cut off any thoughts in that direction.
In a split second the world exploded in pain, light, and then fell to black before he could experience any of the preceding.
Normally, the blackness would be a relief, but Ben could hear the movement of the tendrils above him even as the darkness claimed his consciousness.
*****
Unbelievable.
That the local pests would be able to drive it to such lengths, that was not something it would have predicted when it first examined them upon arrival.
Altering the biology of the locals was child’s play for one such as it, who could reach into the subatomic.
The laws of nature were neither laws, nor natural, and they could easily be tricked into doing whatever one wanted, so long as it was even remotely possible.
The action was, however, rather… consuming.
This had to end.
Now.
*****
Washington Situation Room
“What in the fuck is that thing!?”
No one in the room blinked at the language the President was using. Most of them had already managed worse.
“Nothing we’ve ever seen, Mr. President,” The SecDef responded dully.
“That is something I figured out on my own, Bill.”
“Sorry, Sir.”
Strand sighed, pushing his hair back, annoyed by the fact that it was slick with sweat and felt greasy.
How long have I been up now anyway?
It was the worse night he could remember since he’d been elected, and there was a lot of competition for that particular title.
They were watching through the cameras on the Supercobra attack helicopters, and the scene was something out of a bad horror movie. The Marine Venom helicopter was hanging in a grove of trees, a fair bit off the ground, surrounded by… pulsating and moving tentacles that clearly were nothing remotely of this Earth.
Strand didn’t know what the hell he was looking at, but he knew it was nothing good.
“Get those people out of there,” He ordered, “If I have to, I’m going to order that entire area bombed down to the bedrock.”
“Not much of that in the Glades, Sir.”
“We have enough bombs,” Strand said grimly. “We’ll find it, it has to be under there somewhere.”
*****
Glades
Jan slid under a writhing tentacle, grabbing the strap of her pulse rifle as she released the restraints with her other hand. The tilt of the chopper meant that she continued sliding right off the seat and out the open door onto the skid.
She stopped her motion with a hand on the edge of the chopper’s passenger compartment door, bracing a foot into the skid support, and hefted the rifle off hand while taking stock of the situation.
This is… not good.
The abomination was clearly not quite as low order as she’d thought. It still wasn’t one of the higher sapients, nor one of the most dangerous sorts, but that metric judged such things by how well Realm’s defenses could handle them.
On an uncontacted Earth, she was confident in raising the threat rating of this particular abomination by a few points at the very least.
Biokinetic, high level, Jan thought with grim rational evaluation. Limits, uncertain, but clearly drawing energy from the sun, possibly from ambient sources as well.
She fired a couple shots at a tendril that was getting too close, causing it to whip away, a rumble of pained sounds shaking the air around her.
Need to find the core, and fast. It has to be absorbing local biomatter for this, and that puts us on the menu.
“Hey, you ok out there?”
Jan saw Kirth swing himself enough to look out and down to her, blood spatter on his face and helmet.
“I’m fine, but we need to get down.”
He nodded, “Fast ropes coming right down, watch yourself.”
She braced, getting close to the chopper as he rummaged around, and a moment later a thick rope coil was tossed out past her and the remainder whirred against the edge of the door as it snaked out of the chopper into the trees below.
“You go first, Ma’am,” Kirth said, “We’ll be right behind.”
Jan nodded, grabbing the rope, and leaning back from the skid before she swung out into space, looping her leg around the rope as she began to slide through the branches below.
*****
Pain returned to him before consciousness, which was something that Ben honestly hadn’t known was a thing before that moment. He opened his eyes, or tried to. They didn’t really want to follow orders, however, so all he got at first was a somewhat blurrier darkness.
He groaned and forced them open, moving his less painful arm under himself at the same time, and pushed up onto his side as he looked around. It took a lot of blinking, several sharp stabs of pain, and the headache from hell, but he managed to get his eyes open and functioning.
The dappled light filtering down through the trees left him feeling like maybe he was dreaming, but the pain he was feeling confidently informed him he wasn’t. Ben groaned and pushed up to his knees. Over the pounding in his ears and head he could hears bursts from local carbines and the Colonel’s pulse rifle. He needed to get his ass back into gear.
A light thud to his left caught his attention and he turned to see a thick rope hanging down from above, so Ben looked up in time to see the Colonel slide out of the tree’s branches. Her weapon was aimed up, but she’d stopped firing as she descended, likely to avoid hitting anyone in the wrecked chopper above.
He felt a chill run through him as he saw motion from the trees moving toward her, however.
Ben reached for his sidearm, only to find it missing and remember that he’d had it in hand before he fell. He cast about quickly, but the weapon was nowhere to be found.
“On your three o’clock Colonel!” He called, running back toward the tree as the Colonel swung and opened fire as the tendril swung on her direction.
*****
Jan swung around at the warning from below, eyes widening as she spotted the attack as it swung in on her.
She hurriedly brought her rifle about, firing one handed as she continued to control her descent, but the combination of motion, one handed firing, and other factors shot her accuracy all to hell.
At the last moment before she would have been struck, Jan let go of the rope and fell back, upside down, only her legs keeping her from falling as she got two hands on the rifle and tracked the target while continuing her descent.
She was trained in zero gravity, firing while upside down wasn’t much of a chore, but the motion of the target and her own swinging made hitting anything difficult at best, and the attacks were getting closer.
Automatic fire from above caused her to glance quickly up, spotting Sergeant Kirth as he dropped along from above her. He was firing his Carbine in short bursts as he slid down, and across she could see another fast rope drop with a Marine following right on the tail of the uncoiling loop, his carbine also firing as he dropped.
The combination of fire drove the tendril back enough to buy her time, and she loosened her grip a bit to slide the rest of the way to the ground in a hurry. Jan hit the ground a little hard, winding up on her back on the loamy earth, with her rifle aiming up as she sought a target.
Corporal Wachun was moving in her direction, she noted idly, no weapon evident in his hand. That didn’t surprise her much, considering how he’d left the interior of the helicopter in the first place.
“Are you alright, Colonel?”
“I’m fine,” She said, rolling clear so the Sergeant could land without dropping right on her face. “You?”
“I’ll live. Maybe.”
Jan glanced at him, an eyebrow raising as she took in his comment and his physical state.
He looked somewhat worse for wear, she decided. His uniform was tough, so it hid a lot, but he was limping and seemed to be favoring his side.
“I believe I underestimated the situation, Corporal,” She admitted wearily as the first of the local Marines hit the ground a short distance away.
“I think we both did, Ma’am.” Wachun admitted, wincing as he felt tenderly at his chest. “Class Three, minimum. Type forty… eight?”
“Forty-seven, I believe, though I admit I would have to look it up to be completely certain,” Jan said. “And Class three seems accurate, yes.”